holiday of holidays

the weekend before last my mama and i went to haifa to see family. i am proud to report that i dragged the whole family to the "holiday of holidays" downtown which is a not entirely un-hokey celebration of the convergence in december of three important holidays in the muslim, jewish, and christian traditions. or maybe it's more apt to just say - it's the only place in the world where palestinian-israeli christians and muslims, israeli jews, and santa all get together to eat kebab and wander the streets. the only place where, on saturdays in december at least, people aren't eying each other suspiciously and santa is yelling at the cops in arabic and hebrew to let through his procession of drum playing scouts and baton twirling beauties.

in the evening i went with my cousin and his friend to dalyat al carmel, a druze village close to haifa which cascades down the hillsides in small points of light. we bought trinkets and i watched the sunset color the hills in amazing shades of purple and orange. my cousin made fun of me for taking so many pictures like a tourist. his friend said to me, mock impatiently, tania - where do you live? i answered, tel aviv. ok then, he said, you're not a tourist, stop taking so many pictures.

but these and so many things are still new to me - eruptions of conflict, brief semblances of peace and co-existence, sunsets, christmas lights in storefronts and bilingual hebrew-arabic speaking santas. looking at the sunset, i thought to myself, i was born on this mountain and if i had opened my eyes the first thing i would have seen was the sea below, spreading out dizzyingly as it does from so many places in haifa. so what does it mean to belong somewhere, for somewhere to belong to you, to long for a home in a place you have never seen or not long at all for the first home you knew? i am looking, my eyes wide open. the immensity of the sea from that high above is completely quiet.

crossing jordan

last weekend i met behrangy and his friend in jordan. we wandered the new, dusty streets of amman's upscale shopping area, all but closed down on an early friday afternoon. we ate with ex-pats in a big fancy restaurant. a sign on the wall said king hussein had once eaten there, as well as chris rock. we accidentally hit up a bar full of what one might call high class hookers, dancing for men and ordering them expensive booze. i was silently horrified, behrang's friend nodded approvingly. we ate syrian and israeli chocolate in our hotel room, while watching bbc world news and egyptian soap operas.

petra was full of tourists and people selling donkey rides and cheap jewelry. the ruins of its ancient city towered in shades of pink and orange over brits and americans in red and black checkered keffiyehs. i took pictures to show to friends back home - i imagined a new line called keffiyeh casual or keffiyeh contemporary. behrang and i snuck away to the fanciest hotel in town and ordered cocktails and mezze while his friend investigated the possibility of bunking with bedouins in the caves.

the next day i rode in a shared taxi the three hours to amman, just me and about 20 curious jordanian men. no one spoke to me at first, but then at the rest stop they all gathered around and tested their best english - shooting questions like the israeli border police at allenby bridge. i lied like a champ, pretending to be on god knows what kind of break from university in america...luckily it seemed that no one was keeping track of american holidays. i wanted to tell them i was israeli to see what they'd say but i decided it wouldn't be worth it, even if only one of the 20 wasn't so into the idea.

back on the bus, the guy next to me gestured towards another who had been talking to me, and said to me very seriously, 'beware of the boy.' my heart raced a bit and i asked why, looking over at the 'boy' with green blue eyes, his hair shiny with gel, his racing red jacket too big over his narrow shoulders and his freshly shined black leather shoes, crossing one over the other. he stared back at me, right into me, like fresh off the pages of a nudey magazine, maybe just pushing 22 and already bracing for a hard life of heart breaking. the man next to me leaned in close, his breath pushing at my hair, moist and warm, 'because you're very beautiful.' my heart slowed back to normal and i leaned back in my chair, bracing for the ride into amman.

slouching towards annapolis

it seems that i should weigh in on annapolis since i consider myself to be some kind of envoy of peace to the region (albeit in my own quiet, private sort of way).

what has not already been said about annapolis, about oslo, about israelis and palestinians in general?

well, maybe one thing, everyone needs to be a simulator. in my not so humble opinion, i believe there is a very profound need for people on the ground, just as much as the leaders and the scholars, to reach outside of themselves and see the perspectives of those on the "other side", look at the red lines that come up against their own red lines and the real limitations which for too many years have prevented a solution to this conflict. knowing someone's position is different from having to defend it as your own. you don't just learn the things they might say in a kind of mechanical way, you begin to react from a deeper place inside yourself.

nothing in the world will or should force either side to let go of its narrative of exile, loss, and suffering, but every day the situation becomes more complicated and the likelihood that this will all end with a handshake on the white house lawn more remote. israelis will have to realize and accept why their presence isn't loved in this corner of the world, and palestinians will have to accept that they aren't going to love everyone living on this land, because short of mass atrocity, this is all we have left.

there were two minor earthquakes in the region recently and it got me thinking - what would happen here if a catastrophe completely outside of the realm of the conflict struck? what kind of chaos would it bring, or unexpected cooperation maybe? or what if we all just fell into the sea, together, damned as we seem to be to suffer alongside one another these parallel narratives of exile and loss. what would the world look like without us? which conflict would rush in and take our place?

i was working out at the gym when they showed olmert and abu mazen getting off their respective planes near annapolis on the news. suddenly i couldn't wipe the smile off of my face. i felt filled with happiness, inexplicably. i know we are doomed to failure, in that cynical "realistic" place inside of me, but i couldn't help it, i felt drunk with hope in that moment...drunk with what if...?

everyone weighing in can only talk about the failure, this and that aspect of failure, the concessions, the injustice, the mistrust and fear...but i am here to talk about hope. on the brink of failure let there be one naive moment where we delude ourselves that all will be ok. let us believe that there are solutions and better days and then perhaps when we are really ready to look, we will know better how to find them.

gaza city/tel aviv

our field worker from gaza calls the office daily, many times a day. "shalom, gisha" i answered yesterday and she replied, "shalom gisha" as if gisha were my name. and then we had a little laugh. some days she says shalom tania, and i reply, ahlan ayda. how are you? i ask, and she replies forlornly, still alive. it catches me off guard every time, still, almost every day. oh, i say, stupidly. or, when are you coming to see us again? even more stupidly.

life in tel aviv trudges on, alongside calamity, alongside the bright sea we share in this region begrudgingly. politics seem to have gone out of fashion. a story in the paper today warned ominously about gaza's sewage spilling into the sea if fuel is not available to pump it properly. once in the sea, it wouldn't be constrained by checkpoints or security barriers. it made me think of how i am still making up for lost summers, going to the beach on saturdays and laying for hours at a time, doing not much of anything.

i moved into a new place, with two sweet girls and a dog i've grown fond of named eva. she looks at me with big sad lonely eyes when i come home and it's hard to be mad at her for chewing up the newspaper or spilling her food in the kitchen. my room has a small balcony, which faces northeast, with a view of rooftops and their solar panels and a few ugly high rise buildings and a small, old cemetery. the room itself is yellow yellow, with linoleum floors made to look like granite (so classic here) and it smells a bit like wood because of the cheap balsa wood bed frame i bought for my new, a-bit-too-hard-mattress.

this is where i live and i don't wake up anymore wondering where i am though in my waking hours i sometimes wonder what keeps me here. well, that's not true, i know it's my job that keeps me here though that doesn't prevent me from having exasperated moments, as we all do every where.

i went to this really lame wedding last night and was missing america. i just felt so alienated and different. i was thinking about how for the longest time i wanted to get married, barefoot with flowers in my hair, at the boonville hotel in northern california and suddenly there i was, at this fancy banquet hall with pyrotechnics and blaring techno music and all these israelis line-dancing. and then my great aunt turned to me and said, hopefully next time it will be you. and then the rabbi talked about how it's important that jerusalem never be divided (making not so subtle reference to the negotiations) and i started fantasizing about scandalizing this whole country by marrying ali, barefoot with flowers in my hair, on the greenline somewhere, with israelis and palestinians dancing the hora and dabke together.... and then despite it all, i had to smile to myself.

The right of return (to Britain)

From Haaretz

By Tamara Traubmann

Thousands of people and one very active Internet site have been busy these days with Khaled Al-Mudallal's right to return - that is, his right to return to the University of Bradford in England. Mudallal, 22, was supposed to be devoting his entire attention right now to his last year of studies for a bachelor's degree in business administration. But instead, he is stuck in Rafah and cannot see how he will be able to leave the Gaza Strip and finish his studies.

He is not the only person in such a predicament. More than 6,000 people have requested to leave Gaza - one-10th of them students who are studying abroad and have already missed the start of the academic year. But Israel is not allowing them to travel to Egypt and continue onward to their respective places of study from there.

Mudallal was born in the Rafah refugee camp. He has six other siblings. He went to Bradford six years ago, following in his father's footsteps, who completed his doctorate in history there. "I understood that England was a wonderful place to be, an interesting place where I could develop," he says, explaining his decision to remain abroad even after his father returned to Gaza. "Until then, I had lived in Palestine. It was entirely new for me to live in an area that was not occupied, in a wide open place."

Last June, he came to visit his family in Rafah. He planned to marry his fiancee, Duah, and take her with him on a honeymoon to London. But the timing of the visit turned out to be problematic: In June Hamas took control of Gaza and, in response, Israel tightened its sanctions against the Strip. The Rafah border crossing is closed most of the time and the passage of Gaza's residents into Egypt has virtually come to a standstill. Although Israel has in fact created a system of transportation for the Palestinians, by means of buses that take them from the Erez checkpoint to the border crossing with Egypt at Nitzana, it is not operational at present.

Jeopardizing degrees

According to a report published last week by Gisha: Legal Center for Freedom of Movement (www.gisha.org), there are currently some 6,400 people waiting to leave the Gaza Strip. About 670 of them are students who want to go study in Europe, the United States, various Middle Eastern countries and elsewhere. The delay of their departure could mean they would lose an entire academic year and perhaps even their place at the university, and it jeopardizes the grants and the visas they have received.

Gisha has petitioned the High Court of Justice on Mudallal's behalf, demanding that Israel allow him and his wife to leave the Gaza Strip. At the beginning of this month, the High Court rejected the demand. In its response to the court, the state claimed that the system of transportation to Nitzana - which came to a complete standstill in September - would be resumed that very day, and the judges stated that Mudallal would have to wait his turn.

This could turn into a prolonged delay. Since June, a mere 480 people have left the Gaza Strip using the Israeli transportation system. According to Gisha's report, even if the system were to resume operations immediately, Mudallal - who was assigned number 4,845 - would leave Gaza in another 502 days - almost a year and a half from now.

But the transportation has not yet resumed. According to the spokesman for the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, Shlomo Dror: "There is an intention" of resuming the system in the near future via the Kerem Shalom crossing point. Dror explains that its operation was stopped for security reasons.

"The decision was made by Southern Command, on the grounds that there was heavy firing of mortar bombs and that the Israel Defense Forces was unable to devote additional manpower for the purpose of taking Palestinians out," Dror told Haaretz. "The Palestinians complain to us that they can't leave to go and study. The complaint should be addressed to Hamas - I would very much like Khaled to go study. If Khaled has complaints, he should go to Hamas and say: 'Sorry, you are responsible for my life in Gaza, you have taken control of Gaza. Stop shooting mortar bombs on the crossing points so they will let us out.'"

Last Monday, Gisha once again petitioned the High Court on behalf of students from Gaza, calling for "the policy of collective punishment" that prevents them from going to study abroad to be rejected.

"Rather than fulfilling its obligation to find the resources necessary to open the borders and let the students out, the army has chosen to keep the borders shut," Gisha's director general, Sari Bashi, said. "The Erez checkpoint is open and people are able to cross over there to Israel. It is the army that has decided that students will not leave. Since September's cabinet decision calling for steps to punish the residents of the Gaza Strip, the shuttle service has been canceled and the army has locked up students and thousands of others inside Gaza. International law forbids the deliberate harming of residents of Sderot, and it also forbids deliberately harming one and a half million civilians in Gaza in reprisal."

Hampering education

Gaza's youngsters are limited in their ability to get an academic education. There are only three universities in the Gaza Strip. The departments for bachelor studies do not include subjects vital to Gaza's future well-being, including for example occupational therapy, speech therapy and physiotherapy. The number of possibilities for a master's degree is extremely limited. As for studies in the West Bank, where most Palestinian universities are located, even before Hamas took control of the Strip, Israel did not allow the passage of Gaza's residents to study in the West Bank, and does not allow foreign lecturers and experts to enter the Strip.

The Gisha report claims that "travel restrictions have prevented and continue to prevent university faculty from Gaza from pursuing advanced studies and attending conferences and seminars around the world. The opportunities to conduct joint research and to cooperate with colleagues at other academic institutions worldwide are extremely limited - hampering the development of the educational system in general."

Meanwhile, Mudallal is teaching courses on administration on a voluntary basis at the Islamic University in Gaza. He has already missed more than a month of studies and is afraid that soon he will lose his temporary employment at a computer store in Bradford. Meanwhile, his debts are piling up because before leaving for Gaza, he rented an apartment and bought a car for which he is paying.

Dozens of students have demonstrated on his behalf in England. The National Union of Students there has set up a campaign under the slogan "Let Khaled study," and has organized an Internet site ( www.letkhaledstudy.co.uk). More than 2,000 people have signed a petition calling on the Israeli government to "remove the restrictions on freedom of movement, which it has imposed on Khaled and other students in Gaza."

The student union's Ruqayyah Collector, one of the campaign's leaders, referred to the academic boycott against Israel, which the lecturers' union decided to cancel when the campaign on Khaled's behalf was just starting. "People talk about academic freedom but this is an equal right of all, of the Palestinians as well. Academic freedom can't just relate to one group," she says.

Mudallal is encouraged by the campaign on his behalf. He is still dreaming of finishing his degree, so he can return to Gaza and help rehabilitate its collapsing economy. He invested a great effort to be able to study at Bradford. "Until the age of 16, I didn't speak English at all. I did my best after a day of study at high school. I spent many long hours studying English. But I understood that it would be very good for me to study there, for my future, so I had to study hard."

He adds: "I am a refugee. We are from a village close to Ashdod. But I'm not fighting to go back to that village, but rather to go get an education. That's all I want."

lotem

this is my newest cousin, lotem, which means "rockrose" and her older sister adva ("ripple") who wants to be a baby again too. i had never heard of a lotem but apparently it grows wild here and has beautifully crumpled petals that look like a pink crepe dress that someone didn't have time to iron before they went to the party. let's hope she grows up wild too.

looking for home

today was an interesting day. this morning i went to jerusalem to visit my uncle and his family. i got hit on on the bus by a settler. i wanted to say something dramatic, like, i don't go out for coffee with settlers but i didn't. i've been to his particular settlement. our simulation group went there because it's built in this dramatic way, completely enclosed by palestinian villages. i tried to be sarcastic, asking him what it was like waking up to a view of a palestinian refugee camp but apparently my sarcasm didn't translate because he just said casually, oh, i live on the other side of the neighborhood.

when i got back to tel aviv, i went to go see an apartment. this photo is of the living room, but it was decidedly less tidy than that. the housemates had a bunch of annoying friends over, one especially who after i said i worked in a human rights organization kept making annoying comments. like he wrote my name down on some list and then joked that he'd write in the margins, tania, likes palestinians.

some days this place is so ridiculous.